On Wed, 3 May 2006, Mojca Miklavec wrote:

On 5/3/06, Aditya Mahajan wrote:

...

Hi, Is the mp support for btex...etex broken in the latest context (ConTeXt ver: 2006.04.27 15:59) The following does not compile,

\starttext \startMPpage label(btex This is a test etex, origin) ; \stopMPpage \stoptext

I get an error

! Unable to make mpx file. l.123 label(btex This is a test etex

Even an mp file

beginfig(1) label(btex hello world etex, origin) ; endfig end;

with texexec --mptex gives the same error message.

Can somebody confirm this? Or is something broken at my end?

First of all: 1. in case you are using windows, update "texmfstart.exe" from cont-win.zip (you have to do that every now and then)

I am indeed using windows. I deleted my entire tree and downloaded the latest mswincontext.zip, uninstalled it. I verified that texmfstart.exe is in the path and ran texmfstart newtexexec --mptex and get the same error.

2. check that "texexec" is a synonym (for example texexec.bat under windows or an executable) for running "texmfstart [new]texexec"

I did check that. texexec is a synonym for texmfstart newtexexec. Infact, the example does not compile on live.contextgarden.net I get the same error message when I compile the tex file there.

3. Hans would say that you have to use "textext" instead of btex ... etex

with \startMPpage label(textext("This is a test"),origin) ; \stopMPpage I get || >> test1-mpgraph.mp || >> test1-mpgraph.mpx || ! Unable to make mpx file. || l.124 texpictures[1] := btex || This is a test etex ; as textext internally uses btex/etex. In the pdf file I get *unknown* instead of *This is a test*. I guess that unknown is textext's fallback mechanism.

I doubt that this came with the latest distribution. The btex/etex and textext functionality is a bit broken anyway: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

This is the first time I found it to be broken.

It depends a lot on the system that you use (MikTeX/tetex/standalone), on texexec that you run (texexec or newtexexec), how you run it (a batch/shell script with "texmfstart [new]texexec" or from linux/windows binaries that come with other distributions than the standalone one).

I am using the standalone distribution from pragma on windows.

It might also be that "write18" is set to off, it might be that some \runMP[TEX]graphic[s]true, \forceMP[TEX]graphic[s]true are set to false (chech your cont-usr.tex file). (I don't know which variable does what, but if you try to use an undefined one, TeX will complain anyway. Check the sources or try to switch on all the possible combinations of the commands mentioned above.)

I had \runMPgraphicstrue and \runMPTEXgraphicstrue in cont-sys.tex I added \forceMPTEXgraphictrue to cont-sys.tex and remade the formats. Still, I get the same error. I checked in texmf.cnf and mpxcommand is set to makempx If I run makempx.exe test.mp test.mpx I get dvitomp.exe: mpx3568.dvi: No such file or directory makempx: Command failed: dvitomp mpxerr.dvi test.mpx makempx: can't move mpx3568.dvi to mpxerr.dvi: No such file or directory mpx3568.mp has one line "end." and mpxerr.log is empty. The help of makempx says that makempx is equivalent to mpto -tex, texexec --batch --once --nomp, and dvitomp If I follows these steps manaually, adding --dvi to texexec I get an mpx file. My guess that the error is because 1. texmfstart texexec calls newtexexec 2. On the standalone distribution, newtexexec produces pdf by default. To check this, I created a texexec.bat file in my current directory so that it calls texmfstart texexec.pl and everything works fine now. Thus, for the time being, I have changed my texexec.bat to call texexec.pl. To use newtexexec, makempx should be changed to call texexec --batch --once --nomp --dvi ^^^^^^ Aditya -- Aditya Mahajan, EECS Systems, University of Michigan http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~adityam || Ph: 7342624008